Churches seeing more gun buybacks

In New York City, Albany, weapons turned in for cash day after shooting

Published 8:22 pm, Saturday, December 15, 2012

NEW YORK — A day after 20 children were shot to death in a Connecticut elementary school, some New York City residents are giving up their guns.

Two Brooklyn pastors opened their churches Saturday to the city's gun buyback program, in which anyone with a handgun can trade it in, no questions asked, for a $200 bank card. Rifles fetch $20.

By early afternoon, people had turned in about 60 weapons at the Mt. Ollie Baptist Church in Brooklyn's Brownsville section. Guns were also being collected at St. Peter's Lutheran Church in Brooklyn's Cypress Hills section.

The donors at Mt. Ollie included a widow giving a gun that belonged to her husband, who died last year, said the congregation's pastor, Reginald Bachus.

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"He left a gun and it was in the house, and she has children," Bachus said. "She saw what happened in Newtown, and she got scared that her kids might find the gun. She said it was on her conscience."

Bachus said the holiday season provided extra incentive for people to trade in weapons "because people want to have money to buy gifts."

Donors dropping off guns at the church were ushered into a community hall, beneath the sanctuary. There, law enforcement officials with laptop computers registered the weapons as they were handed in, anonymously.

Benne McCants Sr. and his wife, Ossie, two members of the congregation, dropped off a handgun they had found cleaning out a room in their home. They believed it probably had belonged to their 22-year-old son, who was killed in drug-related violence several years ago in North Carolina.